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Post by General Adam on Feb 14, 2015 18:55:54 GMT -5
Slaughterhouse 5
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Malibu Stacy
Don Corleone
Had TNA/Impact! on while getting ready for my wedding
Posts: 1,449 
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Post by Malibu Stacy on Feb 14, 2015 19:22:45 GMT -5
I flat out hate classic literature. In high school, I made deals with my English teachers having me do extra credit projects in exchange for not having to read anything beyond Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby. I really liked Imajica though, what about the book made it a difficult read for you?
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Sephiroth
Wade Wilson
Surviving
Posts: 29,402
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Post by Sephiroth on Feb 14, 2015 19:43:13 GMT -5
The Stand. Took me a full year to read. I was going to say The Stand I mainly read fantasy/sci fi and loved The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, so i then read/bought almost everything he wrote and i kept 'IT' and The Stand for last. I had no problem with IT but the Stand just never seemed to get going. The only reason i honestly kept reading was because i knew Randall Flagg had a big part in the story (he is one of my favourite SK characters and i love the idea of someone appearing in different books/worlds etc). I ended up liking the Stand in the end but it is still probably one of my least favourite SK books Its the worst possible example of one of his biggest flaws as a writer: he rambles. It was especially frustrating because he would focus on one character just enough to get you engrossed with them-and then he would switch to another one. And there were a LOT of characters in that book. |
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Glitch
Grimlock
Not Going To Die; Childs, we're goin' out to give Blair the test. If he tries to make it back here and we're not with him... burn him.
Watching you.
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Post by Glitch on Feb 14, 2015 19:49:58 GMT -5
Naked Lunch due to being a scrambled mess. I was gonna post that. It was hard enough that he couldn't stick to one thought when telling a story. But then each chapter is a different story, so it made it worse. |
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Post by General Adam on Feb 14, 2015 19:51:03 GMT -5
I flat out hate classic literature. In high school, I made deals with my English teachers having me do extra credit projects in exchange for not having to read anything beyond Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby. I really liked Imajica though, what about the book made it a difficult read for you? The book jumps back and forth between two different stories, like a lot, but I still like it. |
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Post by bibboid on Feb 14, 2015 22:14:31 GMT -5
I agree that A Clockwork Orange was difficult because of the slang that the droogs spoke.
Back in the early 80's I read a book called World War Three which was an analysis of the Cold War, how it could potentially lead to a ground war in Europe (including a small nuclear exchange) and what the global aftermath would be. While I found the whole concept fascinating, it was a hard slog to read that thing through to the end.
After Oliver North testified before congress about the whole Iran-Contra debacle, they released his entire testimony in paperback book form. Again, it was a subject that I was really interested in but it was horribly dull to read. (Seriously. Congressional testimony. What was I thinking?)
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Post by "I'm Batman..." on Feb 14, 2015 22:26:03 GMT -5
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
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Post by Main Eventer on Feb 14, 2015 22:28:52 GMT -5
Green Eggs and Ham.
Why the f*** were those eggs green?
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Post by Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill on Feb 14, 2015 22:36:21 GMT -5
Where's Waldo. I can't find the f***er anywhere.
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adamclark52
El Dandy
I'm one with the Force; the Force is with me
Posts: 8,139
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Post by adamclark52 on Feb 14, 2015 23:16:41 GMT -5
I'm not a heavy-duty reader like some people. Unfinished Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien was pretty brutal for me and I gave up about one hundred pages into the Silmarillion.
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Post by Larryhausen on Feb 15, 2015 0:28:32 GMT -5
I'm not a heavy-duty reader like some people. Unfinished Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien was pretty brutal for me and I gave up about one hundred pages into the Silmarillion. Silmarillion is actually my favorite Tolkien work. But it isn't an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. As an aside, when I was in high school, my English 4 teacher based the entire first half of the year on a book called The River God. I heard about it my first day of Freshman Year. "When you're a senior, you're gonna have to read this horrible book, and Larry is gonna cover all three of his blackboards with questions on it every damn day." Needless to say, when Senior year hit, everyone was f***ing mortified of reading this damn book. Me, personally? I was firmly in my "don't give a shit about school" phase. So I never bought a copy of the book. Never copied down the questions from the blackboard every day. Never did anything remotely related to the book in English class whatsoever. EXCEPT, I paid attention every day when Larry(we called our teachers by their first names at my school) went over the previous nights questions. Then, finally, the test came on this book that everyone had been dreading for four years. The test that basically determined your English grade for the first half of 12th grade. I got the highest grade in my senior class. |
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Urethra Franklin
King Koopa
When Toronto sports teams lose, Alison Brie is sad
Posts: 11,106
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Post by Urethra Franklin on Feb 15, 2015 0:28:58 GMT -5
Must have taken me 10 attempts before I finally finished Ulysses.
Although I love McCarthy and it's now one of my favourite books, I had trouble getting into Blood Meridian.
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Post by Amazing Kitsune on Feb 15, 2015 0:42:36 GMT -5
I don't know what qualifies as a complicated book. Lots of political philosophy I've read might count as being complicated and a lot of the classical history I've read might count as being complicated.
The hardest read for me? Possibly Livy's Ab Urbe Condita. It's really good, but it goes for long stretches where it's really dry.
Hobbes' Leviathan is also up there due to the antiquated English.
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Post by eDemento2099 on Feb 15, 2015 1:17:40 GMT -5
Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer. That's several hours of my life I'll never get back.
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Post by Raskovnik on Feb 15, 2015 1:17:49 GMT -5
I never understood what was so difficult to read about House of Leaves. It's more hype than anything else. I love the book dearly but it's just not that complicated. There are gimmicks and stuff that can be ignored because they really don't add much, like 30 pages of backwards mirrored text that talks about all the material the house is or is not made out of, or sometimes the words aren't in a traditional format. Just...turn the book sideways/upside-down/whatever, big deal. The text itself is fairly straightforward, honestly. There's Johnny's story, there's the Navidson Record, and there's the Whalestoe Letters. There are plenty of allusions and lots of intertexuality at play, to be sure, but most of the references aren't particularly obscure, and the ones that are...so what? They are far from being crucial to getting the gist of things.
Seeing the reputation it's built up of "OMG this book is so difficult to read and super spooky too!" just really grates on me. The hyperbole at play is just absurd and wrongheaded. It's seriously one of my biggest pet peeves. It scares some people away from reading what's actually a moving rumination on mental illness, abuse, love, isolation, reading, and relationships, something they might really need like I did, and it gives other people hoping to dig into it and sink their teeth into something scary a completely wrong idea about what the book actually is so they leave disappointed. Like, sure, there are some unsettling parts and ideas, but it's not even close to the point of the book. The book itself has been reduced to little more than a prop for people to take pictures of the pages and post them on Instagram/Tumblr #houseofleaves #spooky #scary #complicated, or as some hyperbolic boogeyman that no reader dare attempt to conquer since it's oh so spooky and dense. It's so against the heart of the book to me. It also makes it seem like everyone who has "read" and discusses it either took Johnny's warning at the very beginning of the book to heart even though he's a known liar and just stopped there, or tapped out at page 97 when the format started shifting around.
Anyways, for me, for books that I've actually finished: Shishkin's Maidenhair or Pynchon's V. Maidenhair was something else due to its unique format using a question/answer format for delivering 90% of the story as well as the story reading like a feverish daydream as answers become questions, questions become answers, reality and time kind of fall apart, and there are lots of narrative digressions that somehow get back on track...eventually. V. is self-explanatory. It's Pynchon. That means dense, long, encyclopedic sentences with off-the-wall references and situations that make you think "Wait, huh, did you just say that or did I read it wrong?"
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Ultimo Gallos
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 15,520
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Feb 15, 2015 1:30:49 GMT -5
After four attempts I finally got going with Clive Barker's Imajica. Finished it today after slowly going through it. Had to read a summary after since some things went over my head. Heard they were contemplating a series based on the book though I can't really see it as filmable. Up next is Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon that's been on my shelves for years now. Imajica is the only Barker book I have started and never finished. For me the most complicated are either A Clockwork Orange. Mostly cause of the slang. And Burrough's Naked Lunch. |
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Post by Cela on Feb 15, 2015 3:41:41 GMT -5
The Sound and the Fury.
One fourth is a stream of consciousness from the pov of a mentally deficient character.
F*** Faulkner.
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Post by G✇JI☈A on Feb 15, 2015 4:55:48 GMT -5
I too will say THE STAND .. Enjoying it until I got to the bit where they trying to put together a government in Boulder. Come on, get back to the apocalypse and the war between good and evil. It's like that Star Wars thread I jokingly made a week ago. Don't give a shit about committee meetings, get back to the cool shit!
The other and I have said it before is Neal Stephenson's SNOW CRASH.. A good book.. But... Well let me put it this way. Go read a really good fiction book.. OK when you are a third of a way through get a book on religious history and read about twenty pages, then go back to the fictional book for about ten pages and then read fifty pages of the history book, then read a page of the fictional... Well you get the idea. That's what reading Snow Crash was like.
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Nr1Humanoid
Hank Scorpio
Is the #3 humanoid at best.
Posts: 5,605
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Post by Nr1Humanoid on Feb 15, 2015 5:12:11 GMT -5
I flat out hate classic literature. In high school, I made deals with my English teachers having me do extra credit projects in exchange for not having to read anything beyond Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby. I really liked Imajica though, what about the book made it a difficult read for you? Basically, the first 200 pages is dreadfully dull. So I used it as bedtime reading making slow progress and it finally started going. |
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Cranjis McBasketball
Crow T. Robot
Knew what the hell that thing was supposed to be
It's Just a Ride
Posts: 42,477
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Post by Cranjis McBasketball on Feb 15, 2015 6:06:55 GMT -5
Anything by Stephan King, I just can't handle it. I think the only thing I made it through was Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and that's only a short story. I'll stick to the movies, which are all fantastic. Can't read his books.
I'll throw my hat in for A Clockwork Orange too. I could read it and pretend I knew, but I got no idea what the f*** anything is supposed to be saying. I'll just watch the damn movie.
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